SEO – Bowler Hathttps://www.bowlerhat.co.uk
Digital Marketing Simplified.Tue, 12 Dec 2017 12:03:00 +0000en-GBhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1How Long Does SEO Take?https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/how-long-does-seo-take/
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/how-long-does-seo-take/#commentsWed, 22 Nov 2017 11:46:48 +0000https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/?p=9660One of the first questions we get asked by potential new clients is how long does SEO take? If you Google around you will see the general answer given here...

]]>One of the first questions we get asked by potential new clients is how long does SEO take? If you Google around you will see the general answer given here is between 4 to 6 months. But this is a bad answer. It is a generalised answer for starters and does not take your current situation or objectives into consideration.

In this post, I am going to try and give you an overview of how to determine how long SEO would take for you. This will consider three key variables: current situation, objectives, and budget. Of course, you can always tackle SEO yourself. We have a bunch of SEO tips for beginners to help you get started, and a more structured set of SEO tips for small business for those with a little more time and experience.

We love to help at Bowler Hat, so if you are challenged for time, drop a comment below or fire us a message on our contact page and we can give you some input on what an SEO campaign would look like for your business.

Defining Results…

An important caveat here is how we define what SEO results look like. To an SEO agency, it may be that we are seeing positive movement for your major SEO KPIs: rankings and organic traffic. However, as a business, results may mean seeing conversions from organic traffic. So, if the agency moves you from page 5 to page 2 then that’s definitely progress. But, it may not be the kind of progress that generates business (yet). So, it is important here to understand that SEO is a process yet it will likely not drive real-world results until we make it to the top half of the first page.

It’s also important to remember that SEO will drive increased exposure and visibility, however, your website still has a job to do here to convince those visitors to take the desired action. Lots of moving parts.

How Long Will SEO Take For You?

So this is the big question – and it needs clarity with regards to the objectives which should be to bring new leads or sales into the business.

There are three main variables you must consider here:

Situation – where are you currently? What search terms do you rank for and where do they rank? How much volume will these keywords drive? How much authority does your website have in relation to the competitors? What content assets do you have? Do you have technical SEO issues? Do you have a content management system like WordPress? A thorough assessment of your situation will determine your starting point and what SEO tactics are needed.

Objectives – where do you want to be? What search terms do you want to rank for? How quickly do you need this to work? How active are your competitors? Your business objectives will determine if SEO is a good fit for you at this point in time. Often, paid search (PPC) marketing can be a better starting point and then when that is driving profits these can be reinvested into your SEO and organic search marketing.

Budget, expertise & resources – When you understand the current situation and objectives you can determine what needs to be done to get you to where you need to be. This could involve having a new website, technical SEO, local SEO, content development, link & authority building and myriad other jobs – in brief, SEO can have a lot of moving parts so you have to ensure you have the expertise, time, and budget for the bits you can’t or don’t have time to do yourself.

Clearly, it’s hard to give a general answer. There are a lot of variables that need to be considered. SEO can never be good, fast, and cheap. In fact, it can only ever be two of these. Fast and cheap? It won’t be good. Good and fast? It won’t be cheap! Cheap and good? It won’t be fast. You get the picture.

Determining how long SEO will take is equal parts art and science. And just to further complicate things it is all too often a moving target. Algorithm changes, SERP layout changes, competitors’ SEO campaigns and myriad other variables have to be taken into consideration. But, it is essential that you form a realistic opinion as investing for six months without hitting your goals and then pulling the plug is not good marketing. This is why SEO needs monthly reporting that considers not only SEO metrics but how these are moving the dial with real world business objectives (leads, sales etc).

In the majority of cases, getting an accurate idea of how long SEO will take for you will require the help of an SEO consultant or expert. Digital marketing is complicated, and SEO, whilst potentially lucrative, sits at the very top of the difficulty spectrum.

How Long Does SEO Take To Start Working?

To summarise, in some cases, SEO can start working almost instantly. If you are a brand or big business and have tons of authority but technical or strategic SEO issues, fixes here can deliver big results in short timescales. For the majority of SME businesses, it may take months or even years to reach your SEO objectives. To determine how long SEO will take for you we must analyse the current situation against your objectives and factor in your budget and resources.

So, no easy answers. Unfortunately. If you are struggling to get a handle on this drop a comment below or give us a shout on our contact page and we can give you some feedback on how long SEO will take for you!

]]>https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/how-long-does-seo-take/feed/2What Is A SERP? – SEO Acronyms & Jargon Explainedhttps://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/serp-seo-acronyms-jargon-explained/
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/serp-seo-acronyms-jargon-explained/#respondWed, 08 Nov 2017 10:36:44 +0000https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/?p=9603I spend a fair bit of time writing about SEO. On our own blog, on my Search Engine Land Column, and just generally around the web. One acronym I have...

]]>I spend a fair bit of time writing about SEO. On our own blog, on my Search Engine Land Column, and just generally around the web. One acronym I have never been too keen on is SERP. This brief post explains that acronym and any other related SEO SERP jargon.

SERP – A Definition

SERP stands for Search Engine Result Page. So the SERPs are the search engine result pages. These are pages of results for any given search query. These SERPs will also consider other variables such as personalisation, device, and user location. A SERP will typically include organic results, features, and various advertisements.

SERP – Example

The following is an example SERP for the search query “SEO Birmingham“:

The Many Faces Of Google SERPs

The example above is pretty simple. But there are myriad other SERP features. Google now tries to answer questions for people directly in the search results. And depending on the nature and intent of the search query the SERP will include a variety of different features.

Some of the most common SERP features are as follows:

Shopping Results

Shopping results can feature above or to the right of the search results in a block of 5 above or 9 to the right. These are sponsored (paid) listings and are managed via shopping campaigns within Google Adwords.

Knowledge Panel

Google also provides knowledge panels that detail information about a given search term. These typically appear to the right of the main column of paid and organic results.

Featured Snippets

Featured snippets provide direct answers to questions above the search results and exist in the highly desirable position #0. This means a company can have a featured snippet and typically a listing in the top 5 organic results, doubling your exposure.

People Also Ask

Often paired with a featured snippet are the “People also ask” results which provide a set of further, related questions and which again can typically sit above the organic results (or sometimes embedded within). The example below shows how the “People also ask” results sit directly below the featured snippets – with organic results sitting further below those.

These are particularly interesting as clicking on any listing will expand on the question, providing an answer and adding more questions to the bottom of the list. This pushes the actual organic links ever further down the page. This also exposes an answer, the option to search for that specific question, and adds two more questions to the bottom of the list.

Specific Answers

You can also get a range of specific answers directly in the search results. Maybe have a play with this yourself and ask some questions:

How old is Noel Gallagher?

What is my IP?

Where am I?

What is the square root of 25

What is the phone number for Virgin mobile

Bowler Hat SEO phone number

Go back a few years and there were many sites or advertisers providing these kinds of answers, but now you can get that answer without having to ever leave the search results page.

SERP Tools

Google also provides a range of tools like a calculator that you can get directly in the search results.

Why You Should Care About The SERPs

If search is a good vector for your business then you have to understand the landscape for the range of search keywords you target. What does the page look like? And often, when SEOs are talking about these differences in page results they will use the SERP abbreviation or acronym. But what they ultimately mean is the Search Engine Result Pages for that query.

The key to good marketing is to understand the competitive landscape. The SERPs are your battleground. Get good intelligence on the battleground and you have a strategic advantage over your competition. Time spent here understanding the SERPs will only add value to your search campaigns.

If you have any questions or we can help in any way, or you just want to pick our SEO brains, then drop a comment below or give us a shout via our contact form.

]]>https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/serp-seo-acronyms-jargon-explained/feed/0How to Optimise Your Google My Business Listinghttps://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/optimise-google-business-listing/
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/optimise-google-business-listing/#commentsFri, 29 Sep 2017 10:20:39 +0000https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/?p=9448Your Google My Business listing plays an integral part in your local SEO search results to allow you to be found by those in your area. Local results appear in...

]]>Your Google My Business listing plays an integral part in your local SEO search results to allow you to be found by those in your area. Local results appear in organic results pages and on Google maps when you search for businesses near your location in an effort to show you nearby businesses. You can improve your ranking in local results through optimising your Google My Business profile.

Local results are determined by relevancy, distance and prominence. Google pays attention to how well your business matches the searcher’s query, how far your business is from the searcher’s location, and how authoritative your business is.

Google shows the top three local listings that are nearby and these businesses are shown above organic search results. Customers will see local businesses before everything else, meaning these businesses have a greater chance of being visited before competitors in organic search – so you need to optimise for them.

Follow each of the steps below to learn how to edit, and optimise your local Google Business page to help your business’s local ranking and enhance your presence in search results.

A fully optimised Google My Business listing looks something like this in search results when searching the business name:

And something like this in local search results in the local pack:

Firstly, you need to get a Google My Business Profile. Simply go to google.com/business to sign up, claim your page, and verify your account to confirm your business is legitimate and you are the business owner. Once you’ve signed up, you can optimise your profile in the following ways to boost your chances of appearing in local search.

Step 1: Google Places

Here, you will need to search for your business to see if there is already a listing set up. If there is an existing listing for your business, you will need to ‘claim your listing‘ and then check over the information to see if there are any errors. If the information on the existing listing isn’t correct, you can either report it and make the changes or wait till Google gives you ownership over the listing.

Step 2: Profile Info

Local results favour the most relevant results to the search, hence, companies with completed, updated, and accurate information on their profile are easier to match with searches. This will ensure customers get a better understanding of what your business does, whether you are what they are searching for, where you are based, how they can get in touch, and when they can visit.

It is important that you complete all necessary fields to enter all your business information and that it is kept up to date. Also, make sure the info you provide here matches the information on your website and is consistent with all other online presences such as directories and social, and this goes as specific as saying ‘Road’ or ‘Rd’ across all platforms. The information you need to include is:

Your Business Name

Enter your business name as it appears in the offline world so searchers know who you are.

Category

Choose a category that best matches your business to make it clear what your business does. In the example above, we are an ‘internet marketing service’. Be as specific as possible as this helps narrow down relevancy in searches so the searcher can find exactly what they’re looking for.

For example, if you’re Chinese restaurant, choose this as your category – just choosing ‘restaurant’ isn’t specific enough to match the user’s intent if they’re looking for a Chinese restaurant and you’ll be less likely to be chosen against all other restaurants in the area.

Location Address

This is your physical business address. You need to verify your location to appear in the most accurate location in Google maps and be visible to users in that area. There is also the option for those who do not want to show their physical address, those who do not have a physical address, and those who have multiple addresses but want to target local customers in that area.

Opening Hours

Update your opening hours for every day of the week including any special opening hours for holidays. This lets prospects know when you’re available and what times they can get in touch with you. For some business that are visited frequently, Google also shows popular visiting times, how busy it is at the time of the search, and how long people generally spend there.

Phone Number

Update your phone number so that potential customers can get in touch with you easily. You should use a local area code to prove you are a local business.

URLs

Enter the website URL for your business so users can visit your site to find out more about you. You can also include links to specific actions like online orders, reservations, and menus.

Attributes

Attributes give you the opportunity to tell customers more about your business and could include offerings such as WiFi, disabled access, or outdoor seating.

Step 3: Photos & Virtual Tour

According to Google, listings that have a virtual tour and photos generate twice as much interest as those without, because people engage with visuals better than text. Upload a few photos to make your business look good and stand out and show that your business matches user’s search needs. Use images of your logo, products and services, photos of your friendly and hard-working team members, and use them to tell your brand story.

It is recommended to upload a minimum of three photos and make sure they are all high quality and high resolution. Photos you own or have taken yourself that are unique to your business and portray your brand values work more effectively than generic stock images that are not personal to your business. Your customers and previous visitors can also add their images to portray their personal experiences with your business and give prospective customers multiple perspectives of your business.

If you need professional-looking photos, a Google certified photographer can take images of the interior and exterior of your business as well as a 360-degree virtual tour. This is great for portraying the inside and outside of your business to give prospects a behind-the-scenes peek and insight into your business’s atmosphere.

Step 4: Reviews

Reviews are a major factor for ranking in local results. Quality, positive reviews improve your business’s visibility and increase the chances of a customer visiting your business. You should hence aim to get as many authentic and positive 5-star reviews as possible to make your profile stand out and increase your rank.

Reviews highlight your credibility as a business and demonstrate the positive experiences others have had with your brand. This makes prospects more likely to choose your business over competitors – if you are up against a similar business with negative or no reviews, you will stand out against the competition.

In a recent survey, it was found that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation, 74% say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more, and 90% read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business. Reviews play a vital part not only in local search results but in purchasing decisions as they build trust in prospects through displaying a first-hand experience with the products and services that they are interested in buying and help form a positive opinion of your brand.

You should also respond to customer’s reviews to show that you appreciate your customers and their feedback to improve your business.

Step 5: Google Posts

Google Posts are a recent feature in Google My Business and appear in Google search and maps. They give you extra space to promote your events, promotions, offers, newsletters, products, services, blog posts, news, announcements, and anything else you want to endorse.

The aim of your posts is to inspire action, so make them brief, useful and persuasive. When creating a post in the dashboard, you will be able to add a clear image illustrating your post (720px wide by 540px tall), an eye-catching title (for an event) up to 58 characters, a short and punchy description to inspire action (up to 1,500 characters but it’s best to keep it 150-300 characters to fit the frame), and a clear call to action button such as ‘learn more’, ‘reserve’, ‘buy’, ‘sign up’, and ‘get offer’ with a link to your promotion.

Every post you publish will expire in a week so that offers, news, events etc stay current and don’t expire, so remember to update your posts weekly to keep your profile optimised and up to date at all times.

Updates Coming Soon

Google is also testing and beginning to roll out new features for Google My Business, so keep an eye out for these extra features to optimise your listing in the near future.

Q&A

Google has added a Q&A feature to Google My Business so that businesses can answer any questions future customers may have. This is only compatible with Android devices for the time being before it is rolled out to all platforms.

Users ask questions and you respond quickly with the most helpful answer you can provide. From what payment methods are accepted to the best places to park, this feature gives you the opportunity to interact with prospects, be useful, create a good impression, and provide good customer service. These are all things that will encourage customers to choose you. Plus, if they are asking questions this is a positive sign that they are considering using your business and want to know more about you. This enables you to give that little extra helpful push to persuade them to use you.

Another element of the question and answer feature is that users can give a thumbs up to the most helpful answers and push them further up the listing, making popular listings more visible and you being more useful to searchers.

Chat

This is another feature that allows you to be super helpful to prospects, provide great customer service and again, shows that users are interested in what you have to offer. This feature is only currently being rolled out in the US and allows customers to chat with businesses in real time from the search engine results page.

From asking stock availability to making an enquiry, chat will help you create a good brand impression and get customers to like you before they even visit. You could also use this platform to gather leads so that you can keep prospects updated with stock or get in touch about an enquiry. It will also help you convert searchers in the decision-making stage into decisive customers and loyal visitors.

You will be able to access the chat feature through the Google My Business dashboard. Simply click ‘message with customers’ and you can answer questions via SMS message.

]]>Understanding search engine results pages (SERPs) and where you rank in Google for targeted keywords is crucial to ensure your SEO tactics are delivering the required results. Even if you rank well, understanding any changes or trends allows you to keep an eye on competitors that are chasing down your Google ranking.

In this article, you can find out how to check where your website is ranking for targeted keywords. We will also look at the layout of search engine result pages and the various factors that can influence the position in which your site is returned. I will then outline some SEO tips, tools and tactics you can use to best check and keep track of your keyword rankings.

Ranking Fluctuations – Up, Down, and Around We Go

Search results are becoming ever more real time and variable. Keyword rankings can change day-to-day. In some cases hour-by-hour. There are four main factors that will influence where your keywords rank at any time and for any given search engine user.

1. Algorithm Updates – Google is constantly tweaking and refining the algorithm that drives search results. Some of this tweaking is now likely driven by artificial intelligence (AI). Any change could impact your results in a positive or negative manner.

2. Localisation – What you see for any search query can be impacted by your location. If Google feels the query has a strong local intent, for example, if you are looking for a local service provider like a locksmith or plumber, then the location of you and the business will be a huge ranking factor. Typically, you will see businesses closer to you first.

3. Personalisation – Google also uses past browsing habits to show you more relevant results. If you have visited a site many times that site may show up more prominently. Users signed into Google (via Chrome, Gmail, YouTube etc) will be more likely to see personalised results. However, results will still be refined and personalised throughout a search session in a manner to help you get the best possible answer to your question.

4. User Engagement – Do people click on your search results? And when they click do they hang around and engage with your site? Where a page is returned in the search results and gets a low number of clicks or users quickly bounce back to the search engine, then this would indicate a poor result, and as such, rankings may suffer. Where a result gets many clicks and engages users then this result may see improvements. This is almost like a sanity check for the ranking algorithm so the algorithm places your listing but engagement determines if it sinks or swims.

Of course, the other factor here is any SEO work you are undertaking to improve the visibility of your site. Improvements to your site, content, or high-quality backlinks should help improve your visibility. Too much optimisation or low-quality link building can negatively impact your visibility. In short – there are a lot of moving parts in determining where your site is shown to any given searcher for any given search query.

Paid, Local & Organic Results

There are typically three sets of results for any given search:

– paid results

– local results from Google maps

– organic results

The diagram below provides an illustration of how a typical set of search results may look. There are many variations on this theme and Google Maps results will typically only show where the search has a local intent (local businesses or near me searches).

The local results are heavily influenced by location but also can be optimised by Local SEO. If you are a local business then you will want to rank check where you appear in these results and consider various searcher locations to see the variance by distance. As an example, our Bowler Hat site ranks in local results when I search from within Birmingham where we are based. But, if I search for an SEO company when I am at my home, we are pushed just out of the top 3 and I see other companies that are closer to where I live.

Search for “SEO company” within Birmingham (where we operate):

Search for “SEO company” from where I live several miles away:

In this search – despite all other variables being the same – when the searcher location changes, the results can change to reflect the local intent behind the search query. Birmingham is a big place, after all. Fortunately, we retain our strong organic listing below the local pack.

The takeaway here is that getting a big picture overview of where you rank in the local results requires checking from various locations.

The organic results typically sit below the local results. In some cases, we may see a number of organic results above the local results and some more organic results below the local pack. Where Google has less confidence in the local intent or there is more ambiguity in the search term we may see this happen, but in the majority of instances, the local pack sits below the paid results and above the organic results.

Where your business is listed in the organic results can be influenced by localisation and personalisation. This may mean that you can have two listings with one in the local pack and another in the organic results (and sometimes a third with multiple results in the organic listings being a possibility for those with super smart SEO). Or you may even have four listings if you run a PPC advert and have super on point SEO.

The following image shows Bowler Hat listed once at the top of the local results and then twice in the organic results for the search term ‘SEO Consultant Birmingham’. One of these organic results also has review stars.

Hopefully, this gives you a better understanding of the different kind of website ranking that is possible. With that theory out of the way, now we can take a look at the methods to see where you rank and to keep track on your keyword ranking positions over time.

Checking Where Your Website is Ranking in Google with Search Console

Google search console provides us with some average values showing where your website ranks for a variety of search terms. These figures are not exact, and due to various factors (personalisation and localisation), the average figure can be somewhat misleading for local businesses. However, this is diagnostic information direct from Google so should always be reviewed as your first port of call.

Here we see a list of the keywords that you rank for and that are generating clicks. You will want to do a couple of things here to improve the data that you can see and use this as a Google rank checker.

Click on Impressions, CTR (click through rate) & Position

Add a filter to only view results from your country (UK in our case)

This will give you the most accurate data regarding the position you rank for within Google Search Console.

There is a problem though – this data often looks very different to what you may see on a local basis. And in practice, with your target audience, your results may be very different. So this is not a great real world keyword position checker, and ideally, you need to look at a more traditional piece of rank tracking software.

Checking Your Rankings in Bright Local

Bright Local has a suite of tools you can use to check your Google Rank. The Local Search Results Rank Checker is free and super useful. The feature that I really like here is that it actually provides screenshots so you can save them and review them.

You can enter your location and targeted keywords and you will get results unbiased by personalisation – it’s a great tool and one that can help you get a better idea of what your users see.

You can use this tool for free if you manually check and there are also paid tools that will do this on a schedule for you so you can keep a historical check on ranks. All of these tools have a cost, so if you are using an SEO agency (like Bowler Hat) then this is often included in any ongoing SEO service.

If you are serious about understanding your results from multiple locations, a paid SEO rank checker will give you the best results with the least effort.

Using a Private Browser Session to Check Your Rankings

The major browsers all provide a private browsing session. On Chrome, this is called an incognito tab and on Firefox this is a private session. This can be useful to perform a manual check, but be sure to consider how your location when searching can artificially inflate your results here. If you sit in your office and search for the type of business you are then being so close can have a major impact.

You can disable the location element of the search which gives you an idea, but again this is also somewhat unrepresentative of the real world where location will be a factor in the majority of searches. If your keywords are not locally influenced then this will give you better results.

To be super diligent here try this from multiple locations – or ask your staff to try from their home address and take a screenshot (or of course use the Bright Local tool).

Summary

In the world of modern search engines that have so many possible inputs and variances in where your website may rank, even something as seemingly simple as rank tracking can be hugely complicated (*sigh*). There are some free ways to check your progress with some simple weekly checks, but you will save time using a professional tool.

Of course, most SEO packages and services will provide SEO rank tracking and analysis of other KPIs as part of the monthly work. And where understanding Google ranking variance across a range of locations is important, your Google rank checker will need to be configured with this in mind.

Certainly, at Bowler Hat, we look to determine various KPIs to ensure your website is getting the maximum amount of relevant, engaged traffic from search engines.

If you have any questions on the best way to track your rankings or would like to get your rankings professionally checked then get in touch or drop a comment below.

]]>https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/check-website-rankings-google/feed/6Should You Submit Your Website to Search Engines?https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/submit-website-search-engines/
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/submit-website-search-engines/#commentsFri, 01 Sep 2017 13:25:01 +0000https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/?p=9304In 2017 and beyond there is no good reason to submit your website to the major search engines. You can and should register your site with Google Search Console and...

]]>In 2017 and beyond there is no good reason to submit your website to the major search engines. You can and should register your site with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to get diagnostic information from these search engines yet there is no specific need to do this. If your website is live on the Internet and you are doing the usual digital marketing basics like having social media profiles and creating listings in relevant business directories like Yell.com, then the best SEO tip we can recommend is submitting your website to search engines, so that your site will be indexed and can start ranking.

There are some simple ways to check whether Google knows about your website:

If the second case is true then Google has not yet indexed your site. This could be due to a technical reason or simply that your site is brand new and Google has not found it yet. If this is the case, drop us a line and one of our SEO team will take a quick look and feedback (likely save you a little time and point you in the right direction).

How to Get Indexed Faster

If Google (and Bing) has not yet indexed your site there are a few things you can do to help the search engines find your site.

1. Register with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools – this tells the search engine about your site and gets you some diagnostic information you can use to improve how search engines perceive your site. This is the modern equivalent of submitting your website to a search engine and has a bunch of other benefits.

2. Google My Business – setting up a Google My Business page creates a listing for your business within Google’s infrastructure. This helps improve your SEO and helps ensure Google finds and indexes your site as fast as possible.

3. Social Media – setting up social media profiles with a link to your website will help the search engine discover your site as the public elements of the major social media platforms are all crawled at a rapid rate.

4. Have other sites link to yours – Google recommends that you have other sites link to yours. There are many benefits to having links from relevant and well-trafficked sites, from branding to increased traffic and improvements to your ranking for important keywords.

5. Manual Submission Tools – the submission tools still exist for the major engines as a subset of the Webmaster Tools. Ideally, you would use the methods above but for those of you unwilling or unable – these creaky old options still exist:

But What Is the Best Option?

The best option is a combination of the above (well – maybe not #5):

Register with Search Console

Set up Google My Business pages

Set up social media profiles

Get links from relevant sites

Combining these approaches will get the search engines to prick up their ears and take notice of your website and business. This is what will get you indexed in the best possible way and the least amount of time.

]]>https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/submit-website-search-engines/feed/2SEO Tips for Beginners – 5 Easy Wins for 2017https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/seo-tips-beginners/
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/seo-tips-beginners/#respondFri, 18 Aug 2017 11:38:29 +0000https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/?p=9231SEO can be a complex subject. A Google search for “SEO” returns almost 500 million results. Far more than anyone could hope to read in a lifetime. And a lot...

]]>SEO can be a complex subject. A Google search for “SEO” returns almost 500 million results. Far more than anyone could hope to read in a lifetime. And a lot of that information is simply out-of-date or just not relevant to the needs of a beginner trying to get some basic, easy wins.

In this article, we are going to outline the absolute SEO basics for 2017. This will be a series of simple, actionable SEO tips that you can use right now to improve your visibility in organic search and rank higher in Google.

Still with me? Right then. Here are five simple SEO tips for beginners to help you optimise your site and drive more organic traffic, then once your done, check out how you can boost your SEO in 30 days with our 30 small business SEO tips.

1. Research & Use Relevant Keywords

Keywords are the foundation of successful SEO. When your potential customers use a search engine what do they search for? For most small businesses this will be a combination of what you do and where you do it: SEO company in Birmingham or plumber in Sutton Coldfield.

There are some tools and strategies we can use here to make sure we get a good selection of keywords together.

Brainstorm potential keywords – here we simply write down everything that is relevant. What we do, the services we offer, and the locations in which we offer those services. Once you have all of these elements you can combine what you do with where you do it and form a basic list of keywords.

Use keyword research tool – there are a number of keyword research tools out there that can help you identify new keywords. Google has a tool that forms part of the AdWords PPC service. There are other tools like ubersuggest and keywordtool.io that are useful in their free and paid variations.

Search for your keywords – when you search for your keywords you will often see suggestions in the search bar as you type and there will also be a list of suggested keywords at the bottom of the page. Add any relevant variations to your list (and search them again).

What you are really looking to do here is end up with groups of keywords that have the same basic meaning and intent behind them. As an example, if we consider this article on SEO tips for beginners, we could group the following keywords:

SEO tips for beginners

Beginners SEO tips

SEO basics 2017

Beginners search engine optimisation tips

Search engine optimisation tips for beginners

How to do SEO

SEO basics

The intent behind those keywords is all largely the same so they can be grouped together. Any given piece of content can then be optimised for (i.e. feature) those terms. This then ranks the article for the widest range of possible terms.

I would typically put these keywords into a spreadsheet with approximate search volumes and a score relating to how relevant they are. Don’t overcomplicate this – we are just trying to give a loose priority to the language we are going to use here.

Tip 1: Identify and prioritise the keywords that your prospective customers use when looking for the products and services you offer.

2. Optimise Page Titles & Meta Descriptions

Once you have your keyword list then you will want to optimise your page title. Note that this is the behind the scenes HTML <title> element and not what is shown on the page. This is usually editable in your website control panel (CMS) or in your SEO plugin.

What we are trying to do here is get our keywords into the title of the page in a natural way. We have to remember that page titles are what is shown in search results so we are aiming to clearly indicate what the page is about and entice a user to click on our listing.

What I typically like to do is include the what, where, and who if possible. The keywords are the what, the location is the where along with your business name for branding purposes. In an ideal world, you want the keyword at the beginning of the title to aid click-through and for potential ranking improvements.

Plumber in Sutton Coldfield – Marcus’s Plumbing Service

If we look at service pages we can extend upon this:

Boiler Repair Service – Free Quote | Marcus’s Plumbing Service

Emergency Plumber – available 24/7 | Marcus’s Plumbing Service

In both of these page titles, I have included an element that is more for marketing than actual SEO: Free Quote & Available 24/7. These are elements we put there to increase the likelihood that someone will click your listing.

Remember that a search engine listing is still an advertisement, so we must get our marketing dialled in along with our SEO. And, as it so happens, engagement with your listing can have a positive impact on your rankings, so *shock horror* doing good marketing is also good for your SEO.

A word of caution here is not to over-optimise your page titles and just cram them full of keywords.

Plumber | Plumbing | Plumber Company | Emergency Plumber Company

Your page titles should include your keywords but not at the expense of readability or clickability (if that is even a real word).

When we are happy with our titles, the other component to consider is our meta description. Again, this should be editable in your website’s CMS.

Page titles can have the biggest SEO impact, however, the meta description acts as the description for the content on your page. Your title should grab people’s attention but your meta description should help convince them to click.

The page title and meta description we have used for this article are as follows:

With the title, I am detailing what the article is and then the meta description builds on the premise, which hopefully entices more people to click. I also include my name and the name of our business (Bowler Hat) to drive brand awareness.

Note: It is true that meta descriptions do not actually influence rankings directly. However, getting listed is only half the battle – you need clicks. And where a result is clicked more than another this can help improve your ranking through engagement metrics that Google looks at. More worrying, a result that is not clicked at all will lose position and drop from the search results. The takeaway here is that whilst SEO is important, it should never be at the expense of creating good copy.

3. Optimise Page Content

Once our page titles and meta descriptions are optimised, we also want to optimise our page content. Our keyword research (#1) should have provided us with a list of related terms that all have the same intent behind them. We would now look to weave these keywords into our copy in a natural way.

There are various components to a page with the main elements being:

Header Tags – H1, H2, H3 etc

Body Content – the text on the page

Images – the images you use to support your copy

Firstly, consider the heading and subheadings on the page. These can be optimised to include your keywords where it is natural to do so.

Secondly, create copy that accurately describes and promotes your business and aim to use all of your keywords where it is natural to do so. Don’t worry about keyword volumes or specific instances of the terms – just write naturally and try to use the terms that you identified in your keyword research.

Images can also be optimised with the name of the image, the image alt text, and the image description being the primary factors. If the image also sits close to relevant text that can also help further.

When done well, your page will be visible for a wider array of terms and you will be speaking the language of a larger cross set of customers which should aid engagement (and generating more leads and sales from your website). Win-win.

4. Optimise Your Business Around the Web

Your website is central to your SEO efforts, however, this is not the only place where your business is listed. Social media and business directories like Yell.com will also have details for your business. Search engines use this information along with information on your business to help build trust and an understanding of what you do and where you do it.

You can also take a similar approach with your social media profiles. Whilst you may not be able to add a full address or comprehensive description here, you can still cover the essentials of what you do and where you do it.

Tip 4: Update business listings and social media profiles with what you do and where you do it.

5. Build Relevant Links

Link building is a crucial element to driving visibility for competitive keywords. However, link building has a bad reputation – and often rightly so. Links can help and hurt your search engine visibility.

Yet, developing strong visibility requires that you have the right kind of links pointing to your site. These links help Google and other search engines determine your relative importance and to order search results using these metrics.

“Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.'”

So a good, relevant link is still a vote. And votes help show that you are important and relevant and help drive greater visibility in Google search results. It just that they must be the right kind of votes.

It goes without saying that link building is the hardest part of SEO and is where beginners often get stuck. There are, however, a few simple strategies you can use to obtain some safe backlinks that will help improve your visibility in search results.

1. Highly Credible Directory Sites

Here we are talking about the likes of Yell.com, Thompson, and the big business directories and portals in your industry. Google around for your keywords and location, and any listings that rank on the first page of Google are worthy of investigation. A good measuring stick here is whether your potential customers will find and click on these listings – if the answer is yes then it is worth seeking out a listing.

2. Competitor Link Analysis

Reviewing your competitor’s links will often identify link opportunities. By looking at your top 10 competitors in a tool like MajesticSEO, aHrefs, or OpenSiteExplorer, you often find a variety of link opportunities. You are not looking to copy every single link here but rather to identify the cream of the crop from several competitors. Think quality rather than quantity, and again, ask yourself whether your prospects are likely to see and click on this link.

3. Testimonials & Existing Relationships

Offer to write testimonials for companies you work with. Your website designer. Your social media or SEO company. These are all sites that do work for you, are likely local, and can generate a relevant link.

Likewise, if you have existing relationships with suppliers or customers, investigate these sites to see if there is any way a link could be added to these sites.

Tip 5: Build relevant and quality links to your website and content.

Bonus Tip – Register with Google Search Console

As a final bonus tip, be sure to register your site with Google Search Console. This tool analyses your site and provides diagnostic feedback you can use to improve how your site appears in search results. This is information directly from the search engine so you would be foolish not to take advantage of this advice.

Summary

Here we have five basic tips you can use to improve your SEO:

1. Research & use relevant keywords

2. Optimise page titles & meta descriptions

3. Optimise page content

4. Optimise your business around the web

5. Build relevant links

So there we have it. Implement these basic SEO tips and you will see an improvement in your rankings and traffic. And often, getting this 20% dialled in will get you 80% of the results!

When it comes to building a site that search engines love, it pays to read the guidelines published by the search engines themselves. The following links are all well worth your time and will help ensure you make the very best decisions when looking to promote your site on Google and the major search engines.

]]>https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/seo-tips-beginners/feed/0SEO Packages – Can Affordable be Effective?https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/seo-packages-choose-wisely/
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/seo-packages-choose-wisely/#respondThu, 27 Jul 2017 12:00:44 +0000https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/?p=9119SEO can be a difficult marketing tactic to implement. Bad SEO will fail to deliver results and can potentially have a negative effect. More often than not, most cheap SEO...

]]>SEO can be a difficult marketing tactic to implement. Bad SEO will fail to deliver results and can potentially have a negative effect. More often than not, most cheap SEO packages will simply waste your time and money without delivering the results.

And whilst there is no shortage of SEO tips out there, the fastest and most reliable results will often come from hiring a professional individual or company to provide a monthly SEO package – and in this post we aim to help you make that important decision.

This entire post should be readable in about 10 minutes by which time you should be able to identify the best SEO package for your small business.

What Is SEO?

In a nutshell, SEO is the process of raising the visibility of your website for the search terms that your potential customers will type into search engines. So far so good. In practice, SEO puts your business in front of potential customers at the very moment they have a requirement – marketing magic! Whilst not strictly SEO most providers will also consider analytics, user experience and analytics to help measure success and improve the approach.

Where Will SEO Get Your Site Shown?

There are two main categories of results on a search engine page. The paid adverts (PPC) and the organic or natural search engine results.

Typically, the paid results will occupy the top portion of the screen and the top 4 listings (plus the last 3) will generally be adverts. The paid results are often larger and more prominent. You can run adverts at the top of the page by using a PPC management & advertising service or by looking into platforms like Google’s AdWords.

The image below shows the following:

paid results (PPC) at the top of the page

Local results below the paid results

Organic results below the local results

You will notice that Bowler Hat is first in local and first in organic, meaning we have two #1 rankings for an important SEO keyword relevant to where we operate (Birmingham). We are typically very busy but if we wanted to be more aggressive we could also throw a paid ad into the mix, giving us three listings on the page and maximising our exposure.

The organic results that include the local listings and the more traditional listings below those. As you can see above, a business can be visible in both of these using SEO and Local SEO and the paid results. This is important to note as there are three potential listings on the first page for your business.

The natural results tend to be more trusted by searchers and they see the majority of clicks with some studies showing as many as 94% of clicks going to organic listings.

How Search Engines Work

Search engines have a hell of a job to do. They have to crawl the billions of websites out there. They have to understand and categorise them. They then have to find a way to order them by importance so the best and most relevant sites feature at the top of the page. Not easy when you consider Google has knowledge of 30 trillion pages: 30,000,000,000,000.

It is this categorisation and ordering that is the main way in which search engines work. Understanding this will help you better understand the activities that make up an SEO campaign.

We tend to think of this in terms of relevance and authority:

1. Relevance – do you have content that relates to the user’s search query? If I search for “emergency plumber in Sutton Coldfield”, does your website have a page that details the fact that you are an emergency plumber in Sutton Coldfield? And, are you physically located in Sutton Coldfield? Is your site relevant to the intent behind that search query?

2. Authority – there will be many sites going after the same search terms as you so Google has to organise these results. The main factor in authority is the links that point to your site. These links when from other trusted and relevant sites count as a vote helping build your authority (and improve your ranking).

Only by having relevance and authority will your website rank for competitive commercial terms that will generate more business.

What Does SEO Involve?

We must also understand what an SEO campaign looks like and what jobs must be undertaken. A skilled SEO company should offer a complete SEO service from research and strategy to the execution of work on your website (relevance) and away from your site (authority).

Market and Keyword Research: understanding your audience and what they will search for is crucial to building an SEO strategy. The output of this process is often the keywords that you will target in your SEO campaign.

SEO Audit: an SEO audit will help the company understand your current situation along with any strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This intelligence will then be used to identify priorities and outline the month-by-month plan for your SEO.

SEO Friendly Website Development & Optimisation: building a site in a way that search engines can understand is crucial. Things can get pretty technical pretty quickly, but just keep in mind that your SEO must understand how to build and optimise websites. More reading: how to build search engine friendly websites.

Content Development: your website is the vessel but your content is what really matters here. Creating content that search engines understand and can classify is important across your entire marketing process. From product and service pages to portfolios, case studies and reviews. All of this content can help put you in front of users ( and convince those users to take action).

Local SEO: If you are a local business then local SEO is the process of improving the signals that Google uses for search queries which indicate a local intent (plumber near me). Typically, this includes the optimisation of your website, Google My Business optimisation, citation optimisation and the development of local links. There is some crossover with traditional SEO, but local SEO is a distinct skill (and one Bowler Hat is well regarded for as we contribute to the Moz Local SEO Ranking Factors study).

Link Building: Whilst often seen as the most maligned component of SEO, obtaining relevant backlinks is essential. The trick here is to ensure you have the right kind of links. More reading: link building for small businesses.

The main takeaway here is that there are a lot of moving parts to SEO. And whilst a package would indicate something that is an off-the-shelf approach, SEO does not work like that and any approach, packaged or not, needs customising to your situation.

How Much is a Monthly SEO Package?

This is a really difficult question to answer and the costs for SEO are relevant to your industry, current situation, and how fast you want to see results. We can take some guidance from click prices in Google Adwords PPC where certain industries (loans, mortgages etc) can see click prices in the region of £50.00. If you are a local tradesman then these clicks may come down to £1.00.

In highly competitive industries that target national or international audiences, you simply have to do some analysis of the competition to understand the competition and what needs to be done.

For small to medium businesses, it does get a little easier and you should be able to find fixed price SEO packages from around £300 per month.

At Bowler Hat, we have wrestled with pricing and have a range of SEO packages for small businesses (or even micro businesses) that start from only £150 PM. Our goal here is to create a range of no-nonsense affordable SEO packages, opening up this important marketing channel to all from one-man-bands just getting started to established businesses in competitive markets. However, we will always review your situation and objectives to advise on the most suitable package and likely timescales. There is no one size fits all SEO package!

Local Businesses

With local businesses there is a smaller pool of competition so prices typically reflect this:

£150 per month – micro business in very tight geographical area

£300 per month – small business in a single geographical area (most popular)

£500 per month – small business in a single geographical area but highly competitive

National Businesses

With a national business, there is more competition so this is typically more difficult.

£300 per month – low competition or well-established visibility

£500 per month – moderate competition from established competitors

£1000 per month – high level of competition from established sites

Bespoke

If you are in a hugely competitive field, an SEO package is often not the best fit and you will need more research to understand what is required. Highly competitive industries require SEO consultation and bespoke SEO strategy development (something we can help with).

It is also true that SEO is not always a good fit and if you are a start-up and your competition is Amazon, eBay and other online giants, you have to look at where SEO fits into your marketing strategy, as results could take considerable time.

There are also some very cheap SEO packages out there. I have seen £50 for three months so £17 per month. It’s very hard to see what can possibly be done for this money when SEO requires a detailed understanding of the business and competition. These packages do exist though, but be very careful.

How Long Does SEO Take?

This is a real “how long is a piece of string?” question. But, a skilled SEO company should be able to give you a rough guide by doing the calculations. And typically, the variables here will be:

Keywords targeted

current position for targeted keywords

Domain Authority & Page Authority

Competitors’ Domain Authority & Page Authority

SEO budget

If we consider a site that a business ranks in 11th position for, the main keyword and the competition in places 1, 2 and 3 have almost twice as many links and double the domain authority, then we can do some rough calculations with regards to the work required.

This is part art and part science, and also a moving target as your competitors may also be doing SEO. However, a skilled consultant should be able to give you some form of estimate as part of your initial proposal.

Budget is important here. If you have £500 PM then results should be faster than if you have £300 PM. Good SEO can take time so if you need leads yesterday then your SEO should likely be developed in the background whilst looking at other more immediate forms of digital marketing (like search ads or social ads).

So… What Do You Need?

Hopefully, if you have made it this far, then you should have an improved understanding of the SEO process and how that relates to your business. This should make it easier to understand proposals and separate search engine optimisation packages that can help you from those that will waste your time and budget.

Looking at a proposal, we want to see the following:

An understanding of your current situation (SEO Audit)

A clear understanding of your business objectives

A list of actions that will achieve your objectives

Some ways in which success will be measured (KPIs)

A guideline with regards to how long SEO will take at different budgets

The way we tackle this at Bowler Hat is to do an analysis of your website, current position and competitors. With this information, we can make a suggestion regarding budget and detailing timescales. Whilst some competitors will over-promise and fail to deliver, we try to be honest – not always the greatest sales tactic but… that’s not our way.

SEO, when done well, will make your business more prominent and drive more traffic than any other marketing tactic – yet it is crucial to do the job well and work with a skilled provider or agency.

If you have any questions or something seems a bit off with a quote you have received, don’t hesitate to give me a shout on Twitter, LinkedIn or via our contact form.

]]>https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/seo-packages-choose-wisely/feed/0How to Write an Email Asking for a Google Reviewhttps://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/write-email-asking-google-review/
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/write-email-asking-google-review/#commentsFri, 16 Jun 2017 08:50:38 +0000https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/?p=8908Google reviews are important for local SEO as they improve credibility, rank, reputation and brand image. One of the best ways to get more Google reviews is by sending a...

]]>Google reviews are important for local SEO as they improve credibility, rank, reputation and brand image. One of the best ways to get more Google reviews is by sending a simple email asking customers to leave a review, as it is a quick and easy method of receiving feedback.

It is recommended to send your email to happy customers as they act as the best brand advocates. Do not ask customers who appear upset or dissatisfied as they may leave a bad review and damage your reputation. Send your email as soon as possible when your customer is most happy with your service or product and their positive thoughts are fresh in their minds.

Ensure the steps from email to review are as straightforward as possible. You can do this by generating a Google review URL link which can be included in your email and takes reviewers directly to the review page and pre-selects the 5-star option. Include a clear CTA link to the review and make this the single goal for the reader to make the process as easy as possible.

Make the email personal by using your customer’s name and make a personal request to leave a review. Write in a personable and casual tone and test different copy to see which achieves the best conversion rate. Likewise, a plain text email may create a more personal impression, but test this against a HTML version to see which works best.

Keep the email short, but be sure to include key points like why you are asking for a review, how to leave a review, how long it will take, and your gratitude for their feedback. Let them know you are looking forward to reading their review, and thank them immediately after they have left it.

Your email will read something like this:

Dear [client’s name]

Thank you for your recent service. We really appreciate your business, support and feedback, and truly value you as a customer.

Our goal is to provide the very best service and we are always looking for ways to improve. We are looking to gain feedback on our service so that we can enhance your experience and make our customers happy.

We would love to hear your feedback, and I would be incredibly grateful if you could take a couple of minutes to write a quick Google review for us. This will allow us to improve our service and let others recognise the value we provide.

To submit your review, simply click the link below and let us know what you think.

]]>https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/write-email-asking-google-review/feed/2Small Business SEO – 30 SEO tips you can implement in 30 dayshttps://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/small-business-seo-tips/
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/small-business-seo-tips/#commentsWed, 07 Jun 2017 14:04:20 +0000https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/?p=8920Improving the visibility of your small business in search engines is a key advertising strategy in 2017 and beyond. The majority of people now simply go straight to Google or...

]]>Improving the visibility of your small business in search engines is a key advertising strategy in 2017 and beyond. The majority of people now simply go straight to Google or another search engine when they have a requirement. Organic search allows you to be found without the associated costs of paid search or other advertising platforms. And with these 30 Small Business SEO Tips you can make huge improvements.

Yet, SEO can be quite the rabbit hole. There is just so much information out there. Most of it is not relevant and not all of it is accurate. Strategies that go against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines can seem tempting but will often do more harm than good.

In this post, we are going to outline a series of small business SEO tips that you can put into action today. There is a process to SEO, so we will provide these tips in order so you can work through them in a structured manner and improve your visibility as you go.

We will also happily answer any questions in the comments below or on our social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

But… Can You Do SEO Yourself?

It’s a worthwhile question. Elements of SEO can be complex. But for most small businesses, this is not the case. Getting a handle on the basics will often get you most of the way. I am a big believer in the 80/20 rule and it’s likely that 20% of the SEO will get you 80% of the results.

You may run into problems when it comes to some of the more difficult elements like link and authority building, but there is almost certainly improvements you can make. That said, if you need an expert or simply want to focus on running your business and doing what you do best, then drop us a line and let us help you learn about the variety of SEO packages for small businesses that are out there.

Small Business SEO Tips

Right, that’s enough SEO waffle from me. Let’s get to work improving your SEO with 30 tips you action one day at a time!

Research & Preparation

I know you are keen to dive in and start the hardcore optimisation, but knowledge is power and the first tip is to do your research. But not any old research. The resources below represent all you need to know to get started doing your own SEO, so you can stop reading endless blogs and searching for the secret answer that is always just one more blog post or SEO tool subscription away. If you are already well read in SEO and are just looking for the tips, feel free to skip ahead!

ii. Google Webmaster Guidelines: essential reading. Any SEO work done on your site is your responsibility whether you do it or use an agency. Understanding what Google wants and following those guidelines will ensure you work with the search engine to deliver a website experience your customers and the search engine will love.

iii. Moz Beginners Guide to SEO – this is a good overview. It covers SEO from top to bottom and has some specifics regarding on-page SEO elements. Worth your time.

v. The Art of SEO – This is the SEO Bible. The only comprehensive SEO book you will ever need and really the only SEO book worth reading. It’s big. It’s badass. Think of it as a reference guide covering everything you could ever want to know about SEO.

vi. Ultimate Guide to Link Building – The late Eric Ward is probably the most famous link builder in SEO land and has worked with the likes of Amazon and eBay. Eric preaches white hat, sustainable link building strategies and this book will ensure your link building philosophy is on point, which is super important.

If you can spend some time reviewing all of these resources, you will be well informed when it comes to optimising your website. The Art of SEO and Ultimate Guide to Link Building books should sit on your desk for whenever you need inspiration.

Basic Set-Up

To ensure search engines can understand your site, you will want to sign up with the tools provided by the search engines. These tools provide diagnostic data – directly from the horse’s mouth. And you can use the reports here to improve your optimisation.

1. Register with Google Search Console

Search Console (previously webmaster tools) is a free service that helps you monitor the health of your website. From how well the search engine can access and crawl your site to how many pages are indexed. Search Console will also make recommendations for basic improvements to the HTML of your website.

Bing also has a set of webmaster tools. It is something of a copycat set-up to Google, but that’s not to say it is without value. Any diagnostic information from search engines is worth its weight in SEO gold.

SEO Tip: Set-up your site and implement the suggestions.

3. Claim or Create a Google My Business Listing

Google My Business is the digital representation of your physical business. Ensuring your business information is 100% correct on Google My Business is essential. Google your business. Claim your listing if not already done so. Create a listing if one does not exist.

SEO Tip: Put some real time and effort into this. Nice pictures. The right business categories. This is the digital representation of your business within Google’s own infrastructure and has massive implications for Local Business SEO, so give it the attention it deserves.

Keyword Research

The foundation of all successful SEO strategies is understanding the search keywords that your potential customers are using.

4. Conduct Keyword Research

Understanding the search terms your customers use is key to correctly optimising your website and digital presence around the web. For some businesses this can be simple – plumber, electrician etc. However, customers will often search in more detail and you should brainstorm around your business category and services. Typically, even simple keyword research will provide you with guidance on structuring and optimising your website.

There are some tools linked below that can help you review how and what people search for, but a good old-fashioned brainstorm is a solid starting point. Then Google the terms and see what variations Google suggests in the search box and at the bottom of the search results page. Keep revising your search terms and building your keyword list.

SEO Tip: Beyond the tools, Google’s own suggestions in the search box and below the results themselves can really help you to flesh out your results.

5. Organise Keywords into Logical Groups

It is highly unlikely that your homepage can rank every keyword you want to target. And even if it did, can one page be relevant for all of those terms and give the prospective customer exactly what they need? Unlikely.

Organise your keywords into logical groups and this will help you know what pages you need and what terms to optimise each page for.

Plumber
Plumbing
Plumbing Company

Emergency Plumber
Emergency Plumbing
247 Plumbing

Bathroom plumbing
Bathroom plumber
Bathroom plumbing company

You get the picture. Organise your keywords into groups and you can ensure you sensibly include keywords on the right pages. Remember, our goal here is to help the search engine understand what you do, so need to overdo things.

SEO Tip: Start with keyword groups of around 3 to 7 variations on a theme. You don’t need to get every single variation on a term to improve your position, so focus on the popular ones.

6. Target Long-Tail Keywords

The obvious search terms may not always be as useful as they first seem. If you sell shoes then the huge volume for the term “shoes” may seem desirable. However, that is just way too vague a term to convert. More nuanced terms like “red Nike marathon running shoes Birmingham” are far more targeted and suggest a person much closer to making a purchase.

Strategically, you are also far more likely to rank for more specific search terms. So, whilst long tail is often low volume, there is also a huge variety of terms to consider, and those variations add up.

Once you have compiled a list of keywords, search them. Review the results. What does it look like? Do you see competitors? Commercial results? Ads? Or something else? If you see similar businesses and ads then it is likely these keywords are strongly commercial (which is what you are looking for in most cases).

If you see articles or informational results, you may need to consider what kind of content you are creating to rank for these terms. Informational results indicate that informational content is required. Commercial results indicate commercial content is required.

SEO Tip: Grade your keywords so you know which ones truly map to the services you provide.

8. Use a Spreadsheet for Keyword Research

Before too long, you will end up with a huge list of search terms and it can be hard to know what to do with them and certainly how to prioritise them. Using a spreadsheet allows you to go beyond just listing the keywords and to better understand the opportunity and value of each search term.

As a starting point, the following fields can be useful:

Keyword – the search term

Group – the logical group

Geography – the locations you wish to rank for

Targeted page – the page we will optimise for this term

Usage on page – is this in use (and how many times)

Search volume – volume for the keyword

Current rank – where you are currently listed for this term

Difficulty – the difficulty (requires a tool like Moz.com)

Opportunity – how does it look out there? Is there an opportunity?

Business value – how important is this keyword to your business

PPC cost per click – this can be a good indication of the value of these clicks

Priority (1-10)

We tend to gather all of this data and determine a priority. We will then typically order each group of keywords so the higher priority ones are higher in the list (each group listed in priority). Then, when it comes to optimising content, you can make sure you focus on the keywords that represent the best overall opportunity to your business.

SEO Tip: We have a keyword research spreadsheet template we use for client jobs – drop us a line via the contact page and we will be happy to share that with you.

9. Test Your Keywords With PPC

This may seem a strange suggestion for a set of SEO tips, but it is very easy to overestimate the value of a given keyword. By running a short term PPC campaign, you can test the water and determine if clicks for that keyword will lead to the actions you hope for (sales, leads etc).

SEO Tip: Buy 100 clicks for a given keyword and review results. Ideally, you will need conversion tracking configured here and linked to Google AdWords so you can grade the commercial viability of a search term.

Website SEO

Once we have our keywords grouped, we can review and optimise our website. You have complete control here, so your website SEO offers the best overall opportunity to improve your rankings.

10. Website Pages

Armed with your grouped list of keywords, do you have all the pages you need on your site? Using our example of a plumber offering bathroom, kitchen and emergency call-out services, we will need pages for all of these areas:

SEO Tip: Having a relevant page for each term allows you improve results for the keywords relevant to that page/service and to directly speak to the intent beyond the user search.

11. Website Structure

Building on the pages you have on your website is how you structure those pages. A good structure can help search engines understand your website. A useful memory aid here is to think of your website as a filing cabinet. We have the cabinet (site), draws within the cabinet (sections), files within the draw (subsections) and individual documents (pages).

So where your business may have services, products and locations, we can organise these documents within the overall structure of the site.

This seems complicated, but really we are just getting organised. A search engine is a machine learning system, so organisation will help the system understand your site and what you do.

SEO Tip: Think of the entities that you have within your business: services, products, locations etc. These should then become the main sections of your website.

12. Manually Crawl Your Site

You can get a big picture view of your site using crawling software like Screaming Frog. The free version will crawl up to 500 pages, which is enough for most small business websites. If you have more than 500 pages then it is well worth the licence fee.

The software examines your site and provides details on a page-by-page basis. You can then review the major on-page SEO elements and ensure everything lines up tab-by-tab.

URLs
Page Titles
Meta Description
Header Tags (H1, H2)

Work through these four main tabs to make sure your URLs, page titles, meta descriptions and H1 tags are sensibly optimised.

SEO Tip: You can export all the crawl data (or individual tabs) out to a spreadsheet and work on improving your page titles and meta descriptions there. These can then be applied to your site via your content management system (CMS).

13. Check Indexed Content

Screaming Frog will give you an idea of the number of HTML pages on your site. You should have a rough idea but this will confirm. You can then double check how many pages you have indexed in Google Search Console.

You can also get a quick and dirty index count by typing your URL and the site command.

You want this to make sense – if you have a website with 10 pages then you want to see 10 pages indexed. If you see only a single page indexed or hundreds, something does not add up and you likely have technical issues that will need further investigation.

SEO Tip:

If the total number of HTML pages roughly matches the number of indexed pages then move on.

If you have fewer pages indexed than you have on your site, investigate why a number of pages are not indexed.

If you have more indexed pages than you have on your site, investigate what these pages are and whether they need removing.

14. Build Content for People, Not Search Engines

Search engines don’t buy your products or services. People do. Yet all too often, content is bent out of shape to make it better for search engines. Well, I have news for you folks – 1999 called and wants its SEO back. Write content for real people. Weave in your marketing copy. Think of keywords and work them in where possible. People first. Search engines follow.

The easiest way to do this is to read your own website. Really read it. As if you were there for the very first time. If it makes life easier, copy the text into a plain text document and really read it. Often, this process alone can reveal huge improvements. Improving engagement on your site can improve your SEO results, so make sure your content is every bit as good as possible.

SEO Tip: This one is important – if you can’t write engaging sales copy then consider using a marketing company or freelance writer who can help.

15. Optimise Your Navigation

One of the many signals that Google uses to understand your website is the internal navigation. Your site’s nav should help the search engine understand the context of a given page. Ideally, the navigation aligns with the structure of the site.

Consider a site with three services:

Home
Services
– plumbing
– electrical
– building
Contact

Then the navigation here would simplify follow that model. Possibly using a two-tier (drop-down) menu for the services element.

SEO Tip: Don’t forget to also carefully interlink your content. Where you have a product or service, link to it from your blog posts using natural search terms in a way that makes sense within the context of the article.

16. Optimise for Clicks

Your search engine listings are very much adverts for your business. So, it is important to ensure that the copy is enticing and persuades users to take the next step and click through to your site. Get your marketing head on and write your page titles and meta descriptions like you were writing adverts and watch your click-through rates (and rankings) improve.

Crawl your site in Screaming Frog
Review all your page titles
Review all your meta descriptions
Rewrite them to optimise for click-through rates

SEO Tip: There is often a temptation to over-optimise page titles and ignore meta descriptions, but these are crucial in driving users to your site. Optimise them sensibly and focus on increasing clicks to drive users from the search results to your site.

17. Branding the Search Results

Whilst you are reviewing your page titles, determine if you can add your business name or brand to the page titles or meta descriptions. I quite like having the brand at the end of the page title, but depending on the length of your titles this may not work for you.

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If you have complicated or long page titles, you can add your brand to the meta description. I tend to feel this has less visual impact, but it is an option.

Review the page titles tab in Screaming Frog. You can export just your page titles and/or meta descriptions and work in those spreadsheets to keep everything organised.

SEO Tip: A key consideration in marketing is awareness. Every time your listing is shown, that is an ad impression, and an opportunity to drive brand awareness. Use that opportunity to get your name out there.

18. Fetch & Render

Within Google Search Console exists a tool that allows you to fetch and render your pages. This allows you to see how the search engine perceives your pages. This is important, as many of the whizz-bang effects offered by website design themes and frameworks can effectively hide your content from a search engine. And if a search can’t see what is on the page (render) then it can’t categorise and rank it correctly.

SEO Tip: Utilise the fetch and render tool for all important pages and contrast what a user sees and what the search engine sees to ensure all site elements are understood by the search engine.

19. Optimise Your Images

Images are often a neglected element of search engine optimisation. For some businesses, image search or image results blended into the standard search engine results offer an opportunity to drive awareness and traffic. But even for businesses where image search is not so relevant, images offer a way to provide additional context on the page.

Image optimisation is pretty simple stuff:

Optimise image names
Add sensible alt text for all images
Add your branding into your images should they appear within image results
Consider context and where the image appears on the page

You don’t want to do anything daft here and cram images with keywords, but rather be descriptive and use images to add context. If you have a 24/7 emergency plumbing service then have an image showing a plumber turning up to an emergency in the dark of night.

Seriously, don’t overdo it. Search engines are smart. Use your keywords where it makes sense to use them. Ideally, your URLs, navigation, page titles, H1 tags, and meta descriptions will all align and this should make it crystal clear what a given page is about.

Things not to do:

There is no need to use broken language to work search terms into your copy.
Don’t stuff the page with keywords
Don’t use your keywords more than is natural to do so
Don’t hide text or links in an effort to get more keywords on the page

Things to do:

Review page titles
Review meta descriptions
Review your page copy

SEO Tip: Work your keywords into the page titles, meta descriptions and page copy, but don’t overdo it or you may do more harm than good.

Local SEO

SEO for local businesses is a whole subcategory known as Local SEO (makes sense right?). Whilst there are many commonalities with traditional SEO, there are some specific tactics required for local businesses.

21. Business Listings

In local SEO terminology, business listings are known as citations. A citation is simply a mention of your business on a relevant site. Sometimes that mention will include a link. Sometimes it won’t.

The trick here is to identify the sites where your business should be listed. So in the UK, we are talking about the major business directories like Yell.com and Thompson. We are also talking about any sites that are relevant to your location or your business area. If you are a builder and there is a directory of building services then you want to be listed. If you are in Birmingham and there is a list of all businesses in Birmingham, you want to be listed.

There are some lists of citation sources, but often the best way to find relevant sites is to start Googling around your business area and location. You will soon compile a list which you can use as your starting point. You may also find you already have a listing, so be sure to update and optimise any existing ones (rather than duplicating them).

SEO Tip: When optimising citations, use the correct category and a description of your business that sensibly includes your main keywords (services and location typically).

22. NAP Consistency

NAP is shorthand for Name, Address and Phone number. It should really be NAP+W as the website address is also important here. All this really means is that your name and address should be consistent across the web.

This is a combination of a legacy URL (solutions), the official business name, and the abbreviated name we really go by (Bowler Hat). Our logo also has no gap between the Bowler and Hat so that has further created an issue here.

So with eight variations, there are these eight different businesses? Is our authority splintered across these listings? Whilst this seems almost daft, getting your name, address and phone number consistent across the web is super important for strong local search engine rankings.

If your business has multiple locations then a page for each of these locations is strongly recommended. Customers will interact with a specific location and having a page that specifically covers that location is essential in developing strong Local SEO visibility.

Typical content for these includes:

address

local phone number

services provided at this location (with links to service pages ideally)

location specific team members

case studies & portfolio items specific to this location

reviews and testimonials specific to this location

location specific social media channels

These pages should be well structured within the overall site to clearly indicate:

The goal here is to create organic search landing pages that strongly demonstrate why a potential customer would engage with your business. These pages will then rank in the local search results and organically doubling your visibility on the search engine result pages.

SEO Tip: create pages for each physical location and align these with your local SEO campaign & Google My Business listing. The Yoast WordPress SEO plugin can help create these pages with ease!

24. Areas Covered

In many cases, a local business will only have one physical location but may cover many areas. In this instance, pages can be created that demonstrate work conducted at that location. These pages will differ somewhat to location pages in that there is not a physical office in each location. The focus should be on personalising these pages around the specific location so often focusing more on work done and customer testimonials.

Typical content for these pages is similar to the location pages detailed above, yet the weighting would be more towards the work conducted:

local address

local phone number

services provided at this location (with links to service pages ideally)

location specific team members

case studies & portfolio items specific to this location

reviews and testimonials specific to this location

location specific social media channels

These pages should be well structured within the overall site to clearly indicate:

SEO Tip: create unique pages that detail work done in a given area to target smaller areas such as towns within a given area.

25. Content Philosophy

Search engines want to return the best and most relevant result. There are many external signals but the one you have complete control over is your website and the content on the page. Review all competitor pages. Ensure yours is better. Get customers and other people in the business to feedback.

A sensible approach here can be to look at what questions your customers have and use that to flesh out your content. What does a prospective customer need to make a decision? What are your competitors good at? Conduct a SWOT analysis for each competitor and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Then ensure you strike at the weaknesses and at least match them on their strengths. The fact is that most small business websites have very weak content so a focus on being the best will improve search engine visibility for a wide range of terms.

Some content ideas include:

reviews

testimonials

case studies

videos

product and service details

FAQs

Really think this one through and ensure your content helps the customer in making a decision to use your business over the competition.

SEO Tip: ensure your content is more comprehensive than that of your competitors for improved results.

Performance Optimisation & Monitoring

Fast sites are happy sites with happy users. Google loves happy search engine users. And there is a range of tools out there to monitor website performance.

26. Page Speed & Mobile-Friendly Test

Google has a tool that tests your page speed, how mobile friendly your website is and provides a detailed report that you can use to optimise your site (for speed and ease of use). Usability is a ranking factor and this is more diagnostic information direct from the world’s biggest search engine.

We now live in a multi-device mobile first world. Most small businesses will see the first contact from prospects on mobile phones. Ensure your site is built with mobile in mind. For a comprehensive overview of how to truly optimise for mobile beyond just responsive design check out my recent Search Engine Land column: Mobile Optimisation as a competitive advantage.

SEO Tip: The testmysite tool provides an output that you can use to review how mobile friendly your site is, hosting and website performance along with a series of optimisation suggestions. Use this tool to fine-tune the performance of your website.

27. Monitor Your Website Performance

Page speed relies on many factors with the way the site is built, optimised for performance and the hosting being key factors. So testing for speed is something that should be done on a continuous basis to ensure your site is always available and always responding. A recent statistic from Google research details that for every additional second it takes a page to load, conversions can fall by 20% – so ensure your site is blistering fast 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Consider using a third party continuous testing tool like www.pingdom.com

SEO Tip: most small business sites perform poorly so a fast site can be a competitive advantage. Do the optimisation and keep monitoring to have the drop on the competition.

Link Building and Authority

Search engine visibility is still strongly dependent upon having a strong link profile. This becomes more of a factor in more lucrative and competitive markets.

28. Small Business Link Building Strategy

Link building should generally be the last job as you want to squeeze as much performance as possible from all other optimisation strategies – so, before you dive in, make sure you have your site well optimised, have created best of class content and have got your local SEO ducks in a row.

Then when it comes to building links that will improve your SEO, you will want to concentrate on two key factors:

Digital PR – tools like HARO will allow you to help journalists looking for expert input for articles. Usually, input given here will provide a backlink to your website.

Guest Posts – many sites will allow you to make a guest post which is relevant to their audience. This can generate improved exposure and credibility along with a backlink.

You can further improve this strategy by creating useful content on your website and linking to that content in your digital PR and guest post contributions. This allows you to use relevant anchor text to point to articles on your site. These articles should expand upon on a point in the linking article and should add value to the linking page.

As an example, you may have an article about 5 plumbing jobs you can do yourself. You could then link to this with terms like “DIY Plumbing Jobs”, “plumbing jobs you can do yourself”. This allows you to get a branded link to your homepage and a link to a relevant piece of content on your website and typically further improves your results.

SEO Tip: Use Digital PR & Guest Posts to build safe, branded links to your small business website. Further optimise this site by creating relevant content articles and linking to those in your contributions.

Analytics, Measurement and Conversion Rate Optimisation

Getting your SEO dialled in for your Small Business Website will improve traffic yet we must understand those users to truly maximise results. This is where Analytics and Conversion Rate Optimisation comes into play.

29. Install Google Tag Manager (GTM)

Google Tag Manager is the modern way to manage tags on your website. This can simplify deploying and managing all the tags needed for digital marketing (analytics, facebook etc) but it can also speed up your site. Fast site = happy users = happy search engine.

This is super important but all too often ignored. Google Analytics allows you to link site visitors with actions such as form submissions and phone numbers dialled. Adding conversion tracking like this allows us to understand which pages and traffic sources drive leads and sales. In an ideal world having some level of PPC also helps here as we can see exactly what keywords convert clicks to customers and then feed that intelligence back into our organic search campaigns.

There are many ways to achieve this and the specifics will depend upon your set up – drop a comment below if you are struggling and we will feedback.

SEO Tip: Use conversion tracking on forms. Use a tool like Mediahawk to track phone numbers. Use a tool like Inspectlet or Hotjar to get a far improved picture of how users interact with your pages.

Summary

SEO is not voodoo, and in 2017 it is certainly not a series of dirty tricks. Optimising your site is a case of getting many factors aligned and working together. Keywords. URLs and page names. Navigation. Page optimisation. Page copy. Areas covered. If all of these factors are perfectly aligned then we help the search engine understand what you do and where you do it.

When it comes down to it, a search engine is just a tool that connects a question with an answer. For the results to be strong, the search engine has to be completely confident in what you do and where you do it.

]]>https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/small-business-seo-tips/feed/18How to Generate a Google Review Linkhttps://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/google-review-link-generator/
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/google-review-link-generator/#respondFri, 02 Jun 2017 09:09:59 +0000https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/?p=8843Generating your Google review URL is fairly easy. It’s a quick and easy way to point your customers in the right direction of leaving you a review. One of the...

]]>Generating your Google review URL is fairly easy. It’s a quick and easy way to point your customers in the right direction of leaving you a review. One of the most common reasons that I have heard for people not leaving a review is because they didn’t know where to find it.

Generate Your URL

2. Type your business name, city, and zip/post code in the “enter a location” field on the map.

3. Your review link will appear under the map.

4. Copy the short URL to your clipboard.

Now that you have your review URL, you can start to send it out to your customers and get those reviews piling in. If you find yourself struggling to get reviews or can’t think of an easy way to send the URL to your customers,check out this guideand it will be sure to solve your problem.

If you feel that you have now mastered how to generate a Google review link, check out our blog and find out how you can gain some valuable SEO tips to improve your SEO in just 30 days!